A Health and Fitness Blog

The Los Angeles Times recently reported on a study done by Australian researchers in which they allege that “high fat foods may trigger airway inflammation”. You can read the article by clicking HERE.

This study is another example of time and money being wasted on junk science. Once again, dietary fat has been vilified because it is the politically correct thing to do and NOT because science has legitimately implicated it in anyway.

In this study, “Australian researchers did tests on 40 people with asthma who were randomly assigned to eat different meals. One was a high-fat meal of fast food hamburgers and hash browns that came in at 1,000 calories, with 52% of calories from fat. The other was a 200-calories low-fat meal of reduced fat yogurt with 13% of calories from fat. Included in the high-fat test group were 16 obese people; the rest of the study participants were not obese.”

Let’s breakdown the study and see why it wouldn’t hold water in an elementary school science class:

The meals were not iso-caloric. In other words, they did not contain the same number of calories. One contained 1,000 calories and the other, 200 calories. This alone invalidates the study.

The high-fat meal contained a large amount of carbohydrates in the form of wheat and starches. The low-fat meal did not. Sugar (carbohydrates) and especially wheat, are known to be highly inflammatory.

Out of the 20 people in the high-fat group, 16 were obese. Out of the 20 people in the low-fat group, none were obese. How do we know that obesity was not the underlying factor?

Simply put, there are too many variables in this study to able to say what the underlying cause of the inflammation was. This study does not tell us a single thing, except that these researchers had no idea what they were doing.

About

Neil Holland is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine as a Personal Trainer. Since 2003, he has been helping people realize their physical fitness potential, so they can enjoy a healthier lifestyle and a higher quality of life.